The present invention relates to the field of methods for repairing radomes, particularly aircraft radomes made of composite material, and to the tooling used for carrying out this type of repair.
Most aircraft and particularly commercial transport airplanes have a radome at the nose. The radome notably has the function of protecting a radar and has a structure made of a material that is permeable to electromagnetic waves, such as, for example, a composite material. The structure of the radome may become damaged by incidents of various types, such as bird strike or hail, and may exhibit a dent, a tear, scoring, or any other form of damage requiring repair.
Patent application FR2953812 discloses one example of how to repair a fuselage made of composite. As set out in the application, it is necessary to make a cut around the damaged zone in order to remove it and place a patch in the opening made by cutting out, which patch is fixed by curing in the case of a thermosetting resin.
In the case of a radome, in order to perform polymerization, the radome is removed from the aircraft and placed in a heating chamber such as an autoclave, an oven or the like. Now, the frame that is at the free end of the composite radome and that connects it to the aircraft fuselage, as well as other elements of the radome are, in some aircraft, made of a metallic material, which material is unable to withstand the temperature required for polymerizing the resin (over 60° C.).
That means that all the metallic parts have to be removed from the radome, particularly the frame that forms the interface with the fuselage, before curing can take place. This results in a significant increase in the repair time caused solely by the removal of these metallic parts, and in a repair method that is cumbersome and restrictive notably requiring the radome to be transported around and access to remotely-situated heating chambers.
It is an object of the present invention to propose a repair method and a tool for implementing this method that make it possible to alleviate the problem of time and of the difficulty of removing all of the metallic components from a radome and of transporting the radome around and gaining access to suitable heating chambers.